Request to make it harder to accidentally create extended ties

What behavior would you expect if only one note is selected then? If two notes are selected but have different pitches?

Although i can see the "logic" of this, I think in practice it would be a big step backwards in usability if we always had to select two notes in order to use the tie button. Especially considering that really, the only time you normally would ever use that button outside of note entry mode would be to tie chords.

The problem occurs when a tie has been missed during input, and you need to go back and tie previously un-tied notes. Select the two (adjacent) notes, then hit '+': the two notes are tied, but the tie is also extended to the next note of the same pitch, wherever it occurs further along the staff. The tie goes over intervening notes of other pitches (looking a bit like like a slur). Creating ties in the middle of existing music is a constant process of: select two notes, hit '+' to create the tie, then select and delete the unwanted tie to the third note.

I think you are making the mistake of selecting two notes before pressing the tie button. Don't do that. Simply select the first note only, then it works perfectly.

Ok, thanks for that. The tie works differently from most other buttons, in that it effects the selection plus the next note of that pitch, no matter where that note is. This was the essence of zian's initial complaint, but it is what it is , so we can work with that now we know.

See the response in #5. If you are getting the result you see in that screenshot, it is because you are using the tie button incorrectly. You aren't supposed to select *both* notes; only the *first*. The tie button always adds a tie *starting* with the selected note. If two notes are selected, then two ties are added.

That said, it's probably a fairly common mistake, so we could certainly consider changing the behavior to ignore all notes but the first is the user selects multiple notes, just to make it harder for people to accidentally create that type of notation when they don't intend to. But I'm not crazy about that idea either, because it would make it impossible to add multiple ties at once if you *wanted* to. Maybe the rule could be, only create *extended* ties if both notes are selected, but create *normal* ties for all selected notes where possible.

But again, it would be *wrong* to force the user to select both notes. This would make adding ties *harder*, and no one would like that. So no matter what we do, it would need to remain true that adding a tie to one note affects the subsequent note - that's just the nature of ties. Same with slurs, for that matter. or, for change of duration - lengthening one note "eats" the next. A tie is really just a special case of that.

I think there is some confusion of issues happening here.

First there is the issue of what to select in order to get a tie to go where you want it. Current behavior requires selection of all notes to be included in the tie *except the last one*. This apparently so selection of a single note (or single chord) is enough to tie to the next note(s). This makes sense for a single note, but not if there are multiple notes horizontally selected. If I have multiple notes of the same pitch, and want to tie some of them, I have to select one less than I want to get the result.

then hitting tie results in:

when I only wanted the two selected notes tied.

The second issue is the one where ties are created over intervening notes, rests etc. when they are not valid, resulting in:

(which is a tie, not a slur).

This is a bug that need fixing, not a feature request. Musescore should not create ties where they are not between *adjacent* notes of the same pitch.

This is not a bug. Extended ties *are* a feature; they are useful for example in piano music where notes of an arpeggio are held as they are play and then tied to a long chord. See for example https://musescore.org/en/developers-handbook/scrapbook#Extended-Ties. But they probably shouldn't be so easy to accidentally create, hence the feature request here to make them require more explicit action.

Depending on how this is accomplished, it should also address the case where you accidentally selected the last note you wanted tie, even though the normal behavior of the tie button is to create forward ties for all selected notes.

Now I understand, thanks.

So I suppose we need to define how the 'Tie' and 'Extended-Tie' functions actually behave when one or more notes is selected. (The following may not cover all cases.)

Tie
- if a single note is selected, or multiple notes that start at the same time, tie each selected note forward as far as adjacent notes of the same pitch extend
- if multiple notes that start at different times are selected, tie all adjacent notes of the same pitch that are within the selection, but don't extend ties outside the selection
- if there are no adjacent notes of the same pitch, do nothing

Extended-Tie
- for all selected notes, tie to the next note of the same pitch, whether it is adjacent or not.

Then there is what buttons to use for 'Tie' and 'Extended-Tie'. The current 'Tie' button is '+' (which works with both shift+= and numpad+). I think it would be sufficient to make the 'Extended-Tie' button be Ctrl++ (and Ctrl+numpad+).

Hey I know this is a really old topic but for months I couldn't figure out why when I selected two notes and hit the tie button the tie would go and extend way on down the line. I finally found this thread and had the big 'Aha!' moment of revelation that I only needed to select the first note.

I see the suggestions above about having different buttons. I would only suggest maybe clarifying the documentation. with either more text or a graphic or maybe a caveat like "by the way if you select two notes, this is what will happen".

It does break parallelism that ties will always tie an additional note outside of the selection, but slurs, cresendoes, and other lines do not. It makes the mental model a little bit harder to remember, because ties are a special case that work differently from most other markings, and I don't think that they have to be.

This was my take as well (upon reading this thread). It does not make intuitive sense when first starting. When you select two things and perform an operation, you expect it to limit to the selection. The special case is one-note tie, which can certainly be considered a feature, scanning ahead for the next note. A tie with a selection of 1 note has no value, so scanning ahead to find the next note makes some sense.

Core tenants of UI: consistency and feedback. The only feedback you get is a jump to the next note. The tooltip says "Add tied note", which can very easily be considered the tie itself being added to the score. The tooltip should be updated to something like: "Ties to next note of same pitch". Which if you consider simplicity in UI, is far more complex than the intuitive selection constrained behavior with a selection of one note searching for next.